Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 7, Number 9, 1 September 1990 — ʻAi Pono, E Ola [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ʻAi Pono, E Ola

By Terry Shintani, M.D., M.P.H.

Eat more, lose weight

Don't cheat yourself out of great food. "I feel so full but when I qet on the scale, I'm losing weight!" This is a typical statement of a person on the Wai'anae Diet Program. This is because he or ?;hp is not cheatino

themselves out of the great food that we should bp eating. In past articles I have talked about how we lose weight by eating more kalo (taro), ulu (breadfruit) and other starches such as potatoes, brown nee, noodles and the like. We should be eating more of these foods Fortunately, theyare favorite foodsof most people. But if they are our favorite foods, why do we cheat ourselves out of them and gain weight in the process? What do I mean by cheating ourselves? Just look at the following examples. Taro is about 1 ealone per gram (a gram is about the weight of a raisin). An average serving is about 100 qrams or about 3(4 ounces whieh amounts to 100 calories. But fry it in a tablespoon of butter and it's now 200 calories! This means you're cheating yourself out of an entire serving of kalo. You could have eaten an entire extra serving of kalo for the same calories. What's worse is that the kalo serving with butter is only 114 grams or 4 ounces of food whereas the two servings of kalo you could have eaten instead are 200 grams or 7 ounces. The 7 ounces of kalo will help make you feel full butthe 4 ounces of kalo with butter will leave your stomach empty and wanting to eat more. This is one reason people gain weight. They cheat themselves out of food and their bodies know it so they crave more. By the way, if you

think margarine is any better, think again. The same 100 gram serving of kalo with one tablespoon of margarine is 199 calories— just as fattening as if you used butter. Here's some other ways of cheating yourself. 1 baked potato = 116 calories. 1 baked potato plus 1 Tbsp. butter = 216 calories. ( You're cheated out of almost one whole potato.) 1 eup rice = 240 calories. Fried nee with 1 Tbsp. oil = 375 calories (Y ou're cheated out of about two scoops of rice.) 1 eup macaroni = 151 calories. Macaroni with 2 Tbsp. mayonnaise = 351 calories. (You're cheated out of 1-1/3 of a eup of macaroni.) What's the ^oluhon to this? How do we not cheat ourselves out of food? One thing we ean do is to limit our use of fats, oils, mayonnaise, butter or margarine. These are thehighest in caloriesand the lowest in bulk so they don't fill your stomach. The alternative is to find starchy foods that you like and eat them without dressing them up with these oily substances. Eat them plain or use dressings or spices that are tasty but don't have the oil or fat. Some suggestions are: plain steamed sweet potato, baked potato with a little salt and "Butter Buds" or, use a tomato-based marinara sauce with no oil; brown nee covered with tea with a little limu (seaweed) condiment. The beauty of these foods is that you ean eat almost twice as mueh and you won't be cheating yourself out of food. And, they will be calories that don't count as mueh. For an explanation of when calories are not calories, see my next eolumn. Dr. Shintani, physician and nutritionist, isdirector of preventiue medicine at the Waianae Coast Comprehensiue Health Center. It is owned by the communify and the major\ty of its board of directors are of Hawaiian ancestry.